Sony confirms the PS Vita is region free

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So far, Sony seems to be heading for a very good launch of the PS Vita in Japan this year and Western markets early next. As many as 28 games at launch, solid videos showing actual working games a few months before that launch occurs, and now some more good news has appeared via the Twitter account of Sony’s President of Worldwide Studios.

Ray, known as lonelypessimist on Twitter, asked Sony President Shuhei Yoshida through a tweet if the PS Vita was confirmed as region free. Yoshida responded by simply saying “Yes, it is.”

That news will no doubt be met with a lot of happy faces among hardcore gamers who do not wish to wait for some games to reach their territory. It also solves the problem of games that are say, popular in Japan, but not desirable enough to be picked up for Western markets by a publisher. If the hardware is region free you can import the game to play on your machine.

Region locking has always been a controversial addition to consoles and handheld gaming systems. Publishers believe it stops stock being depleted in a territory to service another, and allows them time to do a proper conversion which adheres to the rules and regulations of different markets around the world. Gamers on the other hand, see it as an unnecessary block, especially if a game is never going to get a release in their home territory.

Sony’s decision to go region free is a different stance than Nintendo. For some reason the company decided to add region locking to the 3DS. Let’s hope Nintendo see what Sony is doing and decides to drop the region lock for future games.

With a staggered launch of the PS Vita, and now a region free status confirmed for the hardware, it does open the way for there being a healthy pre-Christmas import market for the device. I just hope Sony has a lot of stock available to fill what is sure to be very strong demand.